IF

F there be any thing that can conciliate attention, or create confidence in the appellations with which I accost you, by that I adjure you, to give this address a patient hearing. I have the fame intereft with you in the subject of which it treats. Do not conclude that, because I may fee it in a different light from that in which the generality of you feem to have confidered it, I must be your enemy. If I am your enemy, I must be my own enemy, the enemy of all that ought to be dear to me. I may, perhaps, be wrong in my opinions; but I can do you no injury, by defiring you to hear what I have to urge in their

favour.

favour. If I cannot induce you to think with me, you will only be where you are.

I own I cannot fee the wisdom or the prudence in liftening only to one fide of the question. In what tranfaction of trade, or bufinefs, would any of you think himself justifiable, if he refused to liften to a matter propofed to him for his advantage, with an attention equal to its importance, and to weigh well what might be urged for it as well as against it? Would it be right in him to confider it through no other medium than that of prejudice and violence, and paffion ? Or to run the risk of facrificing his own best interests to the partial and selfish views of men having a different intereft from his in the event?

On the advantages, or difadvantages, of an Union with England, the great bulk of you must take the opinions of others. The complicated interefts that are involved in all fuch great political queftions, require a very different line of application to that which you purfue. The wifdom of our conftitution has provided, that all fuch questions fhould be difcuffed and fettled by your two Houses of Parliament, advifing the king's government. One of thefe Houfes, is the creature and the organ of that defcription of the community, in which you are claffed; it is peculiarly employed in watching over your interefts, and providing for what will beft promote and fecure them. But, in the prefent queftion of an Union, the perfons who, in the fuccefs of the meafure, forefaw the deftruction of a fyftem which, for centuries, has facrificed the peace and profperity of the great body of the people of Ireland, to the pow er and aggrandizement of individuals, would not trust

their

their caufe to the great deliberative counfel, that thus reprefents you, when called upon by the father of his people, to remove this inveterate abufe, and to provide for the general happinefs, without any regard to the ufurpations of any peculiar defcription or clafs of men. They knew they could have no chance, if the matter was left to reafon and argument, and plain fense: And, as it happened, unfortunately, that, from local circumftances, there was more room for misrepresentation in the effects which a Union might have on your city, than on any other part of the kingdom, they directed all their arts and intrigues against you. They laboured to feparate you from your Parliament; they drove you to take this great question into your own hands, and to decide on it from the impulse of paffions, which they had themselves excited.

To accomplish the triumph of paffion over reafon, and of rafhnefs and precipitancy, over caution and deliberation, a few factious words thrown in, as oil to a flame, are fufficient to produce an effect which it requires a long train of facts, and a lengthened chain of reason, to counteract and do away. Hence, "That Dublin must be ruined by the Union; its "manufacturers deprived of bread, and its shop

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keepers beggared"-Hence, "that grafs fhould grow in Sackville-ftreet; and that we fhould fhoot. "fnipes in College-green," has excited an univerfal, frenzy from Kilmainham to the Pigeon-houfe; and every oyster-woman in the ftreet cries out, that her trade will be ruined, and that Dublin is to be a defart.

This dreadful calamity is to be the unavoidable effect of the removal of our Parliament-fo it is boldly

afferted;

aflerted; but, to give this affertion any weight, your agitators ought to prove to you, that the present state of your capital in buildings, in population, and in wealth, has been entirely owing to its being the feat of Parliament. If they can prove this, the question, no doubt, would be foon decided in their favour. But, if no propofition can be more falfe, or contrary to fact, then all the clamour they have raifed on that pretext, has been the effect of grofs mifrepresentation, and an unpardonable abuse of the confidence you have placed in them.

I will now lay a ground for you to judge of this matter. From a furvey made by order of Government in 1753, the increase of inhabitants in your city fince 1711, was ftated at 32,000. It was immediately after the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748, that the great increase began. No lefs thon 1200 houses were that year on the Stocks at once. After the Peace of Paris in 1763, the encrease was still greater. All this is within living memory. During the whole of these periods, and until 1782, the Parliament affembled only once in two years. They affembled even then only for a very fhort feffion. Every fecond winter the Members of either House were under no neceffity of reforting to the capital in their character of Legiflators. They never did refort to it in that character. Dublin, therefore, did not owe its flourishing state to the mere circumstance of having the feat of Parliament within its walls, and to account for it, you must look to fome other causes.

:

Now, I take it, that what thefe caufes are, it requires no great depth of obfervation to trace. I fhall

clafs

class them as they appear to ine, under four principal heads.

ft. Till within a period of about fifty years, our chief Noblemen, and our very wealthieft Commoners, refided chiefly at their country feats, exercifing hofpitality, and maintaining a conftant intercourfe with their friends and neighbours. Very few among them had a fettled house in Dublin. Even the members of Parliament, during the fhort period of their alternate feffion, contented themselves with lodgings, or took up their temporary refidence in those houses, which, fince your modern improvements in building, have been configned to the better fort of tradesmen and mechanics. The middling gentry fcarcely ever vifited the capital, except when dragged to it by a lawfuit, or fome bufinefs of unavoidable exigency; and it was, then confidered as a great diftinction for a family to take lodgings in town for a Parliament winter.

But, within the period I have mentioned, all this has been gradually changing. The country is deferted every winter, not only by our nobility and chief gentry, but by every family in what are called the genteeler ranks of life; and even among the wealthy of the other orders, there is an emulation of the manners and cuftoms of their betters, that attracts them and their families into the fame vortex of pleasure and diffipation.

2d. The commerce of the country, and its confequent wealth, have increased within the fame period. to a degree feldom equalled in the annals of any people. Dublin has neceffarily had a commanding pro

portion